In mid-February 1938, J. M. Keynes received a letter from Richard Kahn, at the time a member of the Cambridge Faculty Board of Economics and Politics, on the reform of the Economics Tripos, the honors degree introduced by Alfred Marshall in 1903. The faculty were in general agreement on its defects and the pressing importance of revision. On the question of what to do, they could not reach consensus despite recognizing that Cambridge was losing ground. As Keynes replied,
The School [of economics] is going to pieces before our eyes. Half the teaching positions [are] filled up with duds or with those who have given up studying the subject seriously. There is no encouragement for the young. Personal considerations are disgracefully present. And we fall between two stools, because there is no will apparently to make proper progressive arrangements either on the lines of high theory or on the lines...
